Keeping in with Vosper

The young man in the heather-mixture plus fours, who for some time had been pacing the terrace above the ninth green like an imprisoned jaguar, flung himself into a chair and uttered a snort of anguish.

“Women,” said the young man, “are the limit.”

The Oldest Member, ever ready to sympathize with youth in affliction, turned a courteous ear.

“What,” he inquired, “has the sex been pulling on you now?”

“My wife is the best little woman in the world.”

“I can readily believe it.”

“But,” continued the young man, “I would like to bean her with a brick, and bean her good. I told her, when she wanted to play a round with me this afternoon, that we must start early, as the days are drawing in. What did she do? Having got into her things, she decided that she didn’t like the look of them and made a complete change. She then powdered her nose for ten minutes. And when finally I got her on to the first tee, an hour late, she went back into the clubhouse to phone to her dressmaker. It will be dark before we’ve played six holes. If I had my way, golf clubs would make a rigid rule that no wife be allowed to play with her husband.”

The Oldest Member nodded gravely.

“Until this is done,” he agreed, “the millennium cannot but be set back indefinitely. Although we are told nothing about it, there can be little doubt that one of Job’s chief trials was that his wife insisted on playing golf with him. And, as we are on this topic, it may interest you to hear a story.”

“I have no time to listen to stories now.”

“If your wife is telephoning to her dressmaker, you have ample time,” replied the Sage. “The story which I am about to relate deals with a man named Bradbury Fisher⁠—”

“You told me that one.”

“I think not.”

“Yes, you did. Bradbury Fisher was a Wall Street millionaire who had an English butler named Blizzard, who had been ten years with an earl. Another millionaire coveted Blizzard, and they played a match for him, and Fisher lost. But, just as he was wondering how he could square himself with his wife, who valued Blizzard very highly, Mrs. Fisher turned up from England with a still finer butler named Vosper, who had been fifteen years with a duke. So all ended happily.”

“Yes,” said the Sage. “You appear to have the facts correctly. The tale which I am about to relate is a sequel to that story, and runs as follows:”

You say (began the Oldest Member) that all ended happily. That was Bradbury Fisher’s opinion, too. It seemed to Bradbury in the days that followed Vosper’s taking of office as though Providence, recognizing his sterling merits, had gone out of its way to smooth the path of life for him. The weather was fine; his handicap, after remaining stationary for many years, had begun to decrease; and his old friend Rupert Worple had just come out of Sing-Sing, where he had been taking a postgraduate course, and was paying him a pleasant visit at his house in Goldenville, Long Island.

The only thing, in fact, that militated against Bradbury’s complete tranquillity was the information he had just received from his wife that her mother, Mrs. Lora Smith Maplebury, was about to infest the home for an indeterminate stay.

Bradbury had never liked his wives’ mothers. His first wife, he recalled, had had a particularly objectionable mother. So had his second, third, and fourth. And the present holder of the title appeared to him to be scratch. She had a habit of sniffing in a significant way whenever she looked at him, and this can never make for a spirit of easy comradeship between man and woman. Given a free hand, he would have tied a brick to her neck and dropped her in the water-hazard at the second; but, realizing that this was but a Utopian dream, he sensibly decided to make the best of things and to content himself with jumping out of window whenever she came into a room in which he happened to be sitting.

His mood, therefore, as he sat in his Louis Quinze library on the evening on which this story opens, was perfectly contented. And when there was a knock at the door and Vosper entered, no foreboding came to warn him that the quiet peace of his life was about to be shattered.

“Might I have a word, sir?” said the butler.

“Certainly, Vosper. What is it?”

Bradbury Fisher beamed upon the man. For the hundredth time, as he eyed him, he reflected how immeasurably superior he was to the departed Blizzard. Blizzard had been ten years with an earl, and no one disputes that earls are all very well in their way. But they are not dukes. About a butler who has served in a ducal household there is a something which cannot be duplicated by one who has passed the formative years of his butlerhood in humbler surroundings.

“It has to do with Mr. Worple, sir.”

“What about him?”

“Mr. Worple,” said the butler, gravely, “must go. I do not like his laugh, sir.”

“Eh?”

“It is too hearty, sir. It would not have done for the Duke.”

Bradbury Fisher was an easygoing man, but he belonged to a free race. For freedom his fathers had fought and, if he had heard the story correctly, bled. His eyes flashed.

“Oh!” he cried. “Oh, indeed!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is zat so?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, let me tell you something, Bill⁠—”

“My name is Hildebrand, sir.”

“Well, let me tell you, whatever your scarlet name is, that no butler is going to boss me in my own home. You can darned well go yourself.”

“Very good, sir.”

Vosper withdrew like an ambassador who has received his papers; and presently there was a noise without like hens going through a hedge, and Mrs. Fisher plunged in.

“Bradbury,” she cried, “are you mad? Of course Mr. Worple must go if Vosper says so. Don’t you realize that Vosper will leave us if we don’t humour him?”

“I should worry about him leaving!”

A strange, set look came into Mrs. Fisher’s face.

“Bradbury,” she said, “if Vosper leaves us, I shall die. And, what is more, just before dying I shall get a divorce. Yes, I will.”

“But, darling,” he gasped. “Rupert Worple! Old Rupie Worple! We’ve been friends all our lives.”

“I don’t care.”

“We were freshers at Sing-Sing together.”

“I don’t care.”

“We were initiated into the same Frat, the dear old Cracka-Bitta-Rock, on the same day.”

“I don’t care. Heaven has sent me the perfect butler, and I’m not going to lose him.”

There was a tense silence.

“Ah, well!” said Bradbury Fisher with a deep sigh.

That night he broke the news to Rupert Worple.

“I never thought,” said Rupert Worple sadly, “when we sang together on the glee-club at the old Alma Mater, that it would ever come to this.”

“Nor I,” said Bradbury Fisher. “But so it must be. You wouldn’t have done for the Duke, Rupie, you wouldn’t have done for the Duke.”

“Goodbye, Number 8,097,564,” said Rupert Worple in a low voice.

“Goodbye, Number 8,097,565,” whispered Bradbury Fisher.

And with a silent handclasp the two friends parted.

With the going of Rupert Worple a grey cloud seemed to settle upon the glowing radiance of Bradbury Fisher’s life. Mrs. Lora Smith Maplebury duly arrived; and, having given a series of penetrating sniffs as he greeted her in the entrance-hall, dug herself in and settled down to what looked like the visit of a lifetime. And then, just as Bradbury’s cup seemed to be full to overflowing, Mrs. Fisher drew him aside one evening.

“Bradbury,” said Mrs. Fisher, “I have some good news for you.”

“Is your mother leaving?” asked Bradbury eagerly.

“Of course not. I said good news. I am taking up golf again.”

Bradbury Fisher clutched at the arms of his chair, and an ashen pallor spread itself over his clean-cut face.

“What did you say?” he muttered.

“I’m taking up golf again. Won’t it be nice? We’ll be able to play together every day.”

Bradbury Fisher shuddered strongly. It was many years since he had played with his wife, but, like an old wound, the memory of it still troubled him occasionally.

“It was Vosper’s idea.”

“Vosper!”

A sudden seething fury gripped Bradbury. This pestilent butler was an absolute home-wrecker. He toyed with the idea of poisoning Vosper’s port. Surely, if he were to do so, a capable lawyer could smooth things over and get him off with at the worst a nominal fine.

“Vosper says I need exercise. He says he does not like my wheezing.”

“Your what?”

“My wheezing. I do wheeze, you know.”

“Well, so does he.”

“Yes, but a good butler is expected to wheeze. A wheezing woman is quite a different thing. My wheezing would never have done for the Duke, Vosper says.”

Bradbury Fisher breathed tensely.

“Ha!” he said.

“I think it’s so nice of him, Bradbury. It shows he has our interests at heart, just like a faithful old retainer. He says wheezing is an indication of heightened blood-pressure and can be remedied by gentle exercise. So we’ll have our first round tomorrow morning, shall we?”

“Just as you say,” said Bradbury dully. “I had a sort of date to make one of a foursome with three men at the club, but⁠—”

“Oh, you don’t want to play with those silly men any more. It will be much nicer, just you and I playing together.”

It has always seemed to me a strange and unaccountable thing that nowadays, when gloom is at such a premium in the world’s literature and all around us stern young pessimists are bringing home the bacon with their studies in the greyly grim, no writer has thought of turning his pen to a realistic portrayal of the golfing wife. No subject could be more poignant, and yet it has been completely neglected. One can only suppose that even modern novelists feel that the line should be drawn somewhere.

Bradbury Fisher’s emotions, as he stood by the first tee watching his wife prepare to drive off, were far beyond my poor powers to describe. Compared with him at that moment, the hero of a novel of the Middle West would have seemed almost offensively chirpy. This was the woman he loved, and she was behaving in a manner that made the iron sink deep into his soul.

Most women golfers are elaborate wagglers, but none that Bradbury had ever seen had made quite such a set of Swedish exercises out of the simple act of laying the club-head behind the ball and raising it over the right shoulder. For fully a minute, it seemed to him, Mrs. Fisher fiddled and pawed at the ball; while Bradbury, realizing that there are eighteen tees on a course and that this Russian Ballet stuff was consequently going to happen at least seventeen times more, quivered in agony and clenched his hands till the knuckles stood out white under the strain. Then she drove, and the ball trickled down the hill into a patch of rough some five yards distant.

“Tee-hee!” said Mrs. Fisher.

Bradbury uttered a sharp cry. He was married to a golfing giggler.

“What did I do then?”

“God help you, woman,” said Bradbury, “you jerked your head up till I wonder it didn’t come off at the neck.”

It was at the fourth hole that further evidence was afforded the wretched man of how utterly a good, pure woman may change her nature when once she gets out on the links. Mrs. Fisher had played her eleventh, and, having walked the intervening three yards, was about to play her twelfth when behind them, grouped upon the tee, Bradbury perceived two of his fellow-members of the club. Remorse and shame pierced him.

“One minute, honey,” he said, as his life’s partner took a strangelhold on her mashie and was about to begin the movements. “We’d better let these men through.”

“What men?”

“We’re holding up a couple of fellows. I’ll wave to them.”

“You will do nothing of the sort,” cried Mrs. Fisher. “The idea!”

“But, darling⁠—”

“Why should they go through us? We started before them.”

“But, pettie⁠—”

“They shall not pass!” said Mrs. Fisher. And, raising her mashie, she dug a grim divot out of the shrinking turf. With bowed head, Bradbury followed her on the long, long trail.

The sun was sinking as they came at last to journey’s end.

“How right Vosper is!” said Mrs. Fisher, nestling into the cushions of the car. “I feel ever so much better already.”

“Do you?” said Bradbury wanly. “Do you?”

“We’ll play again tomorrow afternoon,” said his wife.

Bradbury Fisher was a man of steel. He endured for a week. But on the last day of the week Mrs. Fisher insisted on taking as a companion on the round Alfred, her pet Airedale. In vain Bradbury spoke of the Green Committee and their prejudice against dogs on the links. Mrs. Fisher⁠—and Bradbury, as he heard the ghastly words, glanced involuntarily up at the summer sky, as if preparing to dodge lightening bolt which could scarcely fail to punish such blasphemy⁠—said that the Green Committee were a lot of silly, fussy old men, and she had no patience with them.

So Alfred came along⁠—barking at Bradbury as he endeavoured to concentrate on the smooth pronation of the wrists, bounding ahead to frolic round distant players who were shaping for delicate chip-shots, and getting a deep toehold on the turf of each successive green. Hell, felt Bradbury, must be something like this; and he wished that he had led a better life.

But that retribution which waits on all, both small and great, who defy Green Committees had marked Alfred down. Taking up a position just behind Mrs. Fisher as she began her down swing on the seventh, he received so shrewd a blow on his right foreleg that with a sharp yelp he broke into a gallop, raced through a foursome on the sixth green, and, charging across country, dived headlong into the water-hazard on the second; where he remained until Bradbury, who had been sent in pursuit, waded in and fished him out.

Mrs. Fisher came panting up, full of concern.

“What shall we do? The poor little fellow is quite lame. I know, you can carry him, Bradbury.”

Bradbury Fisher uttered a low, bleating sound. The water had had the worst effect on the animal. Even when dry, Alfred was always a dog of powerful scent. Wet, he had become definitely one of the six best smellers. His aroma had what the advertisement-writers call “strong memory-value.”

“Carry him? To the car, do you mean?”

“Of course not. Round the links. I don’t want to miss a day’s golf. You can put him down when you play your shots.”

For a long instant Bradbury hesitated. The words “Is zat so?” trembled on his lips.

“Very well,” he said, swallowing twice.

That night, in his du Barri bedroom, Bradbury Fisher lay sleepless far into the dawn. A crisis, he realized, had come in his domestic affairs. Things, he saw clearly, could not go on like this. It was not merely the awful spiritual agony of playing these daily rounds of golf with his wife that was so hard to endure. The real trouble was that the spectacle of her on the links was destroying his ideals, sapping away that love and respect which should have been as imperishable as steel.

To a good man his wife should be a goddess, a being far above him to whom he can offer worship and reverence, a beacon-star guiding him over the tossing seas of life. She should be ever on a pedestal and in a shrine. And when she waggles for a minute and a half and then jerks her head and tops the ball, she ceases to be so. And Mrs. Fisher was not merely a head-lifter and a super-waggler; she was a scoffer at Golf’s most sacred things. She held up scratch-men. She omitted to replace divots. She spoke lightly of Green Committees.

The sun was gilding Goldenville in its morning glory when Bradbury made up his mind. He would play with her no more. To do so would be fair neither to himself nor to her. At any moment, he felt, she might come out on the links in high heels or stop to powder her nose on the green while frenzied foursomes waited to play their approach-shots. And then love would turn to hate, and he and she would go through life estranged. Better to end it now, while he still retained some broken remains of the old esteem.

He had got everything neatly arranged. He would plead business in the City and sneak off each day to play on another course five miles away.

“Darling,” he said at breakfast, “I’m afraid we shan’t be able to have our game for a week or so. I shall have to be at the office early and late.”

“Oh, what a shame!” said Mrs. Fisher.

“You will, no doubt, be able to get a game with the pro or somebody. You know how bitterly this disappoints me. I had come to look on our daily round as the bright spot of the day. But business is business.”

“I thought you had retired from business,” said Mrs. Lora Smith Maplebury, with a sniff that cracked a coffee-cup.

Bradbury Fisher looked at her coldly. She was a lean, pale-eyed woman with high cheekbones, and for the hundredth time since she had come into his life he felt how intensely she needed a punch on the nose.

“Not altogether,” he said. “I still retain large interests in this and that, and I am at the moment occupied with affairs which I cannot mention without revealing secrets which might⁠—which would⁠—which are⁠—Well, anyway, I’ve got to go to the office.”

“Oh, quite,” said Mrs. Maplebury.

“What do you mean, quite?” demanded Bradbury.

“I mean just what I say. Quite!”

“Why quite?”

“Why not quite? I suppose I can say ‘Quite!’ can’t I?”

“Oh, quite,” said Bradbury.

He kissed his wife and left the room. He felt a little uneasy. There had been something in the woman’s manner which had caused him a vague foreboding.

Had he been able to hear the conversation that followed his departure, he would have been still more uneasy.

“Suspicious!” said Mrs. Maplebury.

“What is?” asked Mrs. Fisher.

“That man’s behaviour.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you observe him closely while he was speaking?”

“No.”

“The tip of his nose wiggled. Always distrust a man who wiggles the tip of his nose.”

“I am sure Bradbury would not deceive you.”

“So am I. But he might try to.”

“I don’t understand, mother. Do you mean you think Bradbury is not going to the office?”

“I am sure he is not.”

“You think⁠—?”

“I do.”

“You are suggesting⁠—?”

“I am.”

“You would imply⁠—?”

“I would.”

A moan escaped Mrs. Fisher.

“Oh, mother, mother!” she cried. “If I thought Bradbury was untrue to me, what I wouldn’t do to that poor clam!”

“I certainly think that the least you can do, as a good womanly woman, is to have a capable lawyer watching your interests.”

“But we can easily find out if he is at the office. We can ring them up on the phone and ask.”

“And be told that he is in conference. He will not have neglected to arrange for that.”

“Then what shall I do?”

“Wait,” said Mrs. Maplebury. “Wait and be watchful.”

The shades of night were falling when Bradbury returned to his home. He was fatigued but jubilant. He had played forty-five holes in the society of his own sex. He had kept his head down and his eye on the ball. He had sung negro spirituals in the locker-room.

“I trust, Bradbury,” said Mrs. Maplebury, “that you are not tired after your long day?”

“A little,” said Bradbury. “Nothing to signify.” He turned radiantly to his wife. “Honey,” he said, “you remember the trouble I was having with my iron? Well, today⁠—”

He stopped aghast. Like every good husband it had always been his practice hitherto to bring his golfing troubles to his wife, and in many a cosy after-dinner chat he had confided to her the difficulty he was having in keeping his iron-shots straight. And he had only just stopped himself now from telling her that today he had been hitting ’em sweetly on the meat right down the middle.

“Your iron?”

“Er⁠—ah⁠—yes. I have large interests in Iron⁠—as also in Steel, Jute, Woollen Fabrics, and Consolidated Peanuts. A gang has been trying to hammer down my stock. Today I fixed them.”

“You did, did you?” said Mrs. Maplebury.

“I said I did,” retorted Bradbury, defiantly.

“So did I. I said you did, did you?”

“What do you mean, did you?”

“Well, you did, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Exactly what I said. You did. Didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Yes, you did!” said Mrs. Maplebury.

Once again Bradbury felt vaguely uneasy. There was nothing in the actual dialogue which had just taken place to cause him alarm⁠—indeed, considered purely as dialogue, it was bright and snappy and well calculated to make things gay about the home. But once more there had been a subtle something in his mother-in-law’s manner which had jarred upon him. He mumbled and went off to dress for dinner.

“Ha!” said Mrs. Maplebury, as the door closed.

Such, then, was the position of affairs in the Fisher home. And now that I have arrived thus far in my story and have shown you this man systematically deceiving the woman he had vowed⁠—at one of the most exclusive altars in New York⁠—to love and cherish, you⁠—if you are the sort of husband I hope you are⁠—must be saying to yourself: “But what of Bradbury Fisher’s conscience?” Remorse, you feel, must long since have begun to gnaw at his vitals; and the thought suggests itself to you that surely by this time the pangs of self-reproach must have interfered seriously with his short game, even if not as yet sufficiently severe to affect his driving off the tee.

You are overlooking the fact that Bradbury Fisher’s was the trained and educated conscience of a man who had passed a large portion of his life in Wall Street; and years of practice had enabled him to reduce the control of it to a science. Many a time in the past, when an active operator on the Street, he had done things to the small investor which would have caused raised eyebrows in the fo’c’sle of a pirate sloop⁠—and done them without a blush. He was not the man, therefore, to suffer torment merely because he was slipping one over on the Little Woman.

Occasionally he would wince a trifle at the thought of what would happen if she ever found out; but apart from that, I am doing no more than state the plain truth when I say that Bradbury Fisher did not care a whoop.

Besides, at this point his golf suddenly underwent a remarkable improvement. He had always been a long driver, and quite abruptly he found that he was judging them nicely with the putter. Two weeks after he had started on his campaign of deception he amazed himself and all who witnessed the performance by cracking a hundred for the first time in his career. And every golfer knows that in the soul of the man who does that there is no room for remorse. Conscience may sting the player who is going round in a hundred and ten, but when it tries to make itself unpleasant to the man who is doing ninety-sevens and ninety-eights, it is simply wasting its time.

I will do Bradbury Fisher justice. He did regret that he was not in a position to tell his wife all about that first ninety-nine of his. And the forlorn feeling of being unable to confide his triumphs to a sympathetic ear deepened a week later when, miraculously achieving ninety-six in the medal round, he qualified for the sixth sixteen in the annual invitation tournament of the club to which he had attached himself.

“Shall I?” he mused, eyeing her wistfully across the Queen Anne table in the Crystal Boudoir, to which they had retired to drink their after-dinner coffee. “Better not, better not,” whispered Prudence in his ear.

“Bradbury,” said Mrs. Fisher.

“Yes, darling?”

“Have you been hard at work today?”

“Yes, precious. Very, very hard at work.”

“Ho!” said Mrs. Maplebury.

“What did you say?” said Bradbury.

“I said ho!”

“What do you mean, ho?”

“Just ho. There is no harm, I imagine, in my saying ho, if I wish to.”

“Oh, no,” said Bradbury. “By no means. Not at all. Pray do so.”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Maplebury. “Ho!”

“You do have to slave at the office, don’t you?” said Mrs. Fisher.

“I do, indeed.”

“It must be a great strain.”

“A terrible strain. Yes, yes, a terrible strain.”

“Then you won’t object to giving it up, will you?”

Bradbury started.

“Giving it up?”

“Giving up going to the office. The fact is, dear,” said Mrs. Fisher, “Vosper has complained.”

“What about?”

“About you going to the office. He says he has never been in the employment of anyone engaged in commerce, and he doesn’t like it. The Duke looked down on commerce very much. So I’m afraid, darling, you will have to give it up.”

Bradbury Fisher stared before him, a strange singing in his ears. The blow had been so sudden that he was stunned.

His fingers picked feverishly at the arm of his chair. He had paled to the very lips. If the office was barred to him, on what pretext could he sneak away from home? And sneak he must, for tomorrow and the day after the various qualifying sixteens were to play the match-rounds for the cups; and it was monstrous and impossible that he should not be there. He must be there. He had done a ninety-six, and the next best medal score in his sixteen was a hundred and one. For the first time in his life he had before him the prospect of winning a cup; and, highly though the poets have spoken of love, that emotion is not to be compared with the frenzy which grips a twenty-four handicap man who sees himself within reach of a cup.

Blindly he tottered from the room and sought his study. He wanted to be alone. He had to think, think.

The evening paper was lying on the table. Automatically he picked it up and ran his eye over the front page. And, as he did so, he uttered a sharp exclamation.

He leaped from his chair and returned to the boudoir, carrying the paper.

“Well, what do you know about this?” said Bradbury Fisher, in a hearty voice.

“We know a great deal about a good many things,” said Mrs. Maplebury.

“What is it, Bradbury?” said Mrs. Fisher.

“I’m afraid I shall have to leave you for a couple of days. Great nuisance, but there it is. But, of course, I must be there.”

“Where?”

“Ah, where?” said Mrs. Maplebury.

“At Sing-Sing. I see in the paper that tomorrow and the day after they are inaugurating the new Osborne Stadium. All the men of my class will be attending, and I must go, too.”

“Must you really?”

“I certainly must. Not to do so would be to show a lack of college spirit. The boys are playing Yale, and there is to be a big dinner afterwards. I shouldn’t wonder if I had to make a speech. But don’t worry, honey,” he said, kissing his wife affectionately. “I shall be back before you know I’ve gone.” He turned sharply to Mrs. Maplebury. “I beg your pardon?” he said, stiffly.

“I did not speak.”

“I thought you did.”

“I merely inhaled. I simply drew in air through my nostrils. If I am not at liberty to draw in air through my nostrils in your house, pray inform me.”

“I would prefer that you didn’t,” said Bradbury, between set teeth.

“Then I would suffocate.”

“Yes,” said Bradbury Fisher.

Of all the tainted millionaires who, after years of plundering the widow and the orphan, have devoted the evening of their life to the game of golf, few can ever have been so boisterously exhilarated as was Bradbury Fisher when, two nights later, he returned to his home. His dreams had all come true. He had won his way to the foot of the rainbow. In other words, he was the possessor of a small pewter cup, value three dollars, which he had won by beating a spavined old gentleman with one eye in the final match of the competition for the sixth sixteen at the Squashy Hollow Golf Club Invitation Tournament.

He entered the house, radiant.

“Tra-la!” sang Bradbury Fisher. “Tra-la!”

“I beg your pardon, sir?” said Vosper, who had encountered him in the hall.

“Eh? Oh, nothing. Just tra-la.”

“Very good, sir.”

Bradbury Fisher looked at Vosper. For the first time it seemed to sweep over him like a wave that Vosper was an uncommonly good fellow. The past was forgotten, and he beamed upon Vosper like the rising sun.

“Vosper,” he said, “what wages are you getting?”

“I regret to say, sir,” replied the butler, “that, at the moment, the precise amount of the salary of which I am in receipt has slipped my mind. I could refresh my memory by consulting my books, if you so desire it, sir.”

“Never mind. Whatever it is, it’s doubled.”

“I am obliged, sir. You will, no doubt, send me a written memo to that effect?”

“Twenty, if you like.”

“One will be ample, sir.”

Bradbury curveted past him through the baronial hall and into the Crystal Boudoir. His wife was there alone.

“Mother has gone to bed,” she said. “She has a bad headache.”

“You don’t say!” said Bradbury. It was as if everything was conspiring to make this a day of days. “Well, it’s great to be back in the old home.”

“Did you have a good time?”

“Capital.”

“You saw all your old friends?”

“Every one of them.”

“Did you make a speech at the dinner?”

“Did I! They rolled out of their seats and the waiters swept them up with dusters.”

“A very big dinner, I suppose?”

“Enormous.”

“How was the football game?”

“Best I’ve ever seen. We won. Number 432,986 made a hundred-and-ten-yard run for a touch down in the last five minutes.”

“Really?”

“And that takes a bit of doing, with a ball and chain round your ankle, believe me!”

“Bradbury,” said Mrs. Fisher, “where have you been these last two days?”

Bradbury’s heart missed a beat. His wife was looking exactly like her mother. It was the first time he had ever been able to believe that she could be Mrs. Maplebury’s daughter.

“Been? Why, I’m telling you.”

“Bradbury,” said Mrs. Fisher, “just one word. Have you seen the paper this morning?”

“Why, no. What with all the excitement of meeting the boys and this and that⁠—”

“Then you have not seen that the inauguration of the new Stadium at Sing-Sing was postponed on account of an outbreak of mumps in the prison?”

Bradbury gulped.

“There was no dinner, no football game, no gathering of Old Grads⁠—nothing! So⁠—where have you been, Bradbury?”

Bradbury gulped again.

“You’re sure you haven’t got this wrong?” he said at length.

“Quite.”

“I mean, sure it wasn’t some other place?”

“Quite.”

“Sing-Sing? You got the name correctly?”

“Quite. Where, Bradbury, have you been these last two days?”

“Well⁠—er⁠—”

Mrs. Fisher coughed dryly.

“I merely ask out of curiosity. The facts will, of course, come out in court.”

“In court!”

“Naturally I propose to place this affair in the hands of my lawyer immediately.”

Bradbury started convulsively.

“You mustn’t!”

“I certainly shall.”

A shudder shook Bradbury from head to foot. He felt worse than he had done when his opponent in the final had laid him a stymie on the last green, thereby squaring the match and taking it to the nineteenth hole.

“I will tell you all,” he muttered.

“Well?”

“Well⁠—it was like this.”

“Yes?”

“Er⁠—like this. In fact, this way.”

“Proceed.”

Bradbury clenched his hands; and, as far as that could be managed, avoided her eye.

“I’ve been playing golf,” he said in a low, toneless voice.

“Playing golf?”

“Yes.” Bradbury hesitated. “I don’t mean it in an offensive spirit, and no doubt most men would have enjoyed themselves thoroughly, but I⁠—well, I am curiously constituted, angel, and the fact is I simply couldn’t stand playing with you any longer. The fault, I am sure, was mine, but⁠—well, there it is. If I had played another round with you, my darling, I think that I should have begun running about in circles, biting my best friends. So I thought it all over, and, not wanting to hurt your feelings by telling you the truth, I stooped to what I might call a ruse. I said I was going to the office; and, instead of going to the office, I went off to Squashy Hollow and played there.”

Mrs. Fisher uttered a cry.

“You were there today and yesterday?”

In spite of his trying situation, the yeasty exhilaration which had been upon him when he entered the room returned to Bradbury.

“Was I!” he cried. “You bet your Russian boots I was! Only winning a cup, that’s all!”

“You won a cup?”

“You bet your diamond tiara I won a cup. Say, listen,” said Bradbury, diving for a priceless Boule table and wrenching a leg off it. “Do you know what happened in the semifinal?” He clasped his fingers over the table-leg in the overlapping grip. “I’m here, see, about fifteen feet off the green. The other fellow lying dead, and I’m playing the like. Best I could hope for was a half, you’ll say, eh? Well, listen. I just walked up to that little white ball, and I gave it a little flick, and, believe me or believe me not, that little white ball never stopped running till it plunked into the hole.”

He stopped. He perceived that he had been introducing into the debate extraneous and irrelevant matter.

“Honey,” he said, fervently, “you mustn’t get mad about this. Maybe, if we try again, it will be all right. Give me another chance. Let me come out and play a round tomorrow. I think perhaps your style of play is a thing that wants getting used to. After all, I didn’t like olives the first time I tried them. Or whisky. Or caviar, for that matter. Probably if⁠—”

Mrs. Fisher shook her head.

“I shall never play again.”

“Oh, but, listen⁠—”

She looked at him fondly, her eyes dim with happy tears.

“I should have known you better, Bradbury. I suspected you. How foolish I was.”

“There, there,” said Bradbury.

“It was mother’s fault. She put ideas into my head.”

There was much that Bradbury would have liked to say about her mother, but he felt that this was not the time.

“And you really forgive me for sneaking off and playing at Squashy Hollow?”

“Of course.”

“Then why not a little round tomorrow?”

“No, Bradbury, I shall never play again. Vosper says I mustn’t.”

“What!”

“He saw me one morning on the links, and he came to me and told me⁠—quite nicely and respectfully⁠—that it must not occur again. He said with the utmost deference that I was making a spectacle of myself and that this nuisance must now cease. So I gave it up. But it’s all right. Vosper thinks that gentle massage will cure my wheezing, so I’m having it every day, and really I do think there’s an improvement already.”

“Where is Vosper?” said Bradbury, hoarsely.

“You aren’t going to be rude to him, Bradbury? He is so sensitive.”

But Bradbury Fisher had left the room.

“You rang, sir?” said Vosper, entering the Byzantine smoking-room some few minutes later.

“Yes,” said Bradbury. “Vosper, I am a plain, rugged man and I do not know all that there is to be known about these things. So do not be offended if I ask you a question.”

“Not at all, sir.”

“Tell me, Vosper, did the Duke ever shake hands with you?”

“Once only, sir⁠—mistaking me in a dimly-lit hall for a visiting archbishop.”

“Would it be all right for me to shake hands with you now?”

“If you wish it, sir, certainly.”

“I want to thank you, Vosper. Mrs. Fisher tells me that you have stopped her playing golf. I think that you have saved my reason, Vosper.”

“That is extremely gratifying, sir.”

“Your salary is trebled.”

“Thank you very much, sir. And, while we are talking, sir, if I might⁠—There is one other little matter I wished to speak of, sir.”

“Shoot, Vosper.”

“It concerns Mrs. Maplebury, sir.”

“What about her?”

“If I might say so, sir, she would scarcely have done for the Duke.”

A sudden wild thrill shot through Bradbury.

“You mean⁠—?” he stammered.

“I mean, sir, that Mrs. Maplebury must go. I make no criticism of Mrs. Maplebury, you will understand, sir. I merely say that she would decidedly not have done for the Duke.”

Bradbury drew in his breath sharply.

“Vosper,” he said, “the more I hear of that Duke of yours, the more I seem to like him. You really think he would have drawn the line at Mrs. Maplebury?”

“Very firmly, sir.”

“Splendid fellow! splendid fellow! She shall go tomorrow, Vosper.”

“Thank you very much, sir.”

“And, Vosper.”

“Sir?”

“Your salary. It is quadrupled.”

“I am greatly obliged, sir.”

“Tra-la, Vosper!”

“Tra-la, sir. Will that be all?”

“That will be all. Tra-la!”

“Tra-la, sir,” said the butler.